Poland - The Historical Setting

2. THE JAGIELLON ERA, 1385-1572

The next major period was dominated by the union of
Poland
with Lithuania under a dynasty founded by the Lithuanian
grand
duke Jagiello. The partnership proved profitable for the
Poles,
who played a dominant role in one of the most powerful
empires in
Europe for the next three centuries.

The Polish-Lithuanian Union

Poland's unlikely partnership with the adjoining Grand
Duchy
of Lithuania, Europe's last heathen state, provided an
immediate
remedy to the political and military dilemma caused by the
end of
the Piast Dynasty. At the end of the fourteenth century,
Lithuania was a warlike political unit with dominion over
enormous stretches of present-day Belarus and Ukraine.
Putting
aside their previous hostility, Poland and Lithuania saw
that
they shared common enemies, most notably the Teutonic
Knights;
this situation was the direct incentive for the Union of
Krewo in
1385. The compact hinged on the marriage of the Polish
queen
Jadwiga to Jagiello, who became king of Poland under the
name
Wladyslaw Jagiello. In return, the new monarch accepted
baptism
in the name of his people, agreed to confederate Lithuania
with
Poland, and took the name Wladyslaw II. In 1387 the
bishopric of
Wilno was established to convert Wladyslaw's subjects to
Roman
Catholicism. (Eastern Orthodoxy predominated in some parts
of
Lithuania.) From a military standpoint, Poland received
protection from the Mongols and Tatars, while Lithuania
received
aid in its long struggle against the Teutonic Knights.

The Polish-Lithuanian alliance exerted a profound
influence
on the history of Eastern Europe
(see
fig. 2). Poland and
Lithuania would maintain joint statehood for more than 400
years,
and over the first three centuries of that span the
"Commonwealth
of Two Nations" ranked as one of the leading powers of the
continent.

The association produced prompt benefits in 1410 when
the
forces of Poland-Lithuania defeated the Teutonic Knights
in
battle at Grunwald (Tannenberg), at last seizing the upper
hand
in the long struggle with the renegade crusaders. The new
Polish
Lithuanian dynasty, called "Jagiellon" after its founder,
continued to augment its holdings during the following
decades.
By the end of the fifteenth century, representatives of
the
Jagiellons reigned in Bohemia and Hungary as well as
PolandLithuania , establishing the government of their clan over
virtually all of Eastern Europe and Central Europe. This
farflung federation collapsed in 1526 when armies of the
Ottoman Empire (see Glossary)
won a crushing victory at the Battle of
Mohács (Hungary), wresting Bohemia and Hungary from the
Jagiellons and installing the Turks as a menacing presence
in the
heart of Europe.

The "Golden Age" of the Sixteenth Century

The Jagiellons never recovered their hegemony over
Central
Europe, and the ascendancy of the Ottomans foreshadowed
the
eventual subjection of the entire region to foreign rule;
but the
half century that followed the Battle of Mohács marked an
era of
stability, affluence, and cultural advancement unmatched
in
national history and widely regarded by Poles as their
country's
golden age.

Poland-Lithuania as a European Power

The Teutonic Knights had been reduced to vassalage, and
despite the now persistent threats posed by the Turks and
an
emerging Russian colossus, Poland-Lithuania managed to
defend its
status as one of the largest and most prominent states of
Europe.
The wars and diplomacy of the century yielded no dramatic
expansion but shielded the country from significant
disturbance
and permitted significant internal development. An
"Eternal
Peace" concluded with the Ottoman Turks in 1533 lessened
but did
not remove the threat of invasion from that quarter.

A lucrative agricultural export market was the
foundation for
the kingdom's wealth. A population boom in Western Europe
prompted an increased demand for foodstuffs;
Poland-Lithuania
became Europe's foremost supplier of grain, which was
shipped
abroad from the Baltic seaport of Gdansk. Aside from
swelling
Polish coffers, the prosperous grain trade supported other
notable aspects of national development. It reinforced the
preeminence of the landowning nobility that received its
profits,
and it helped to preserve a traditionally rural society
and
economy at a time when Western Europe had begun moving
toward
urbanization and capitalism.

The Government of Poland-Lithuania

In other respects as well, the distinctive features of
Jagiellonian Poland ran against the historical trends of
early
modern Europe. Not the least of those features was its
singular
governmental structure and practice. In an era that
favored the
steady accumulation of power within the hands of European
monarchs, Poland-Lithuania developed a markedly
decentralized
system dominated by a landed aristocracy that kept royal
authority firmly in check. The Polish nobility, or
szlachta, enjoyed the considerable benefits of
landownership and control over the labor of the peasantry.
The
szlachta included 7 to 10 percent of the
population,
making it a very large noble class by European standards.
The
nobility manifested an impressive group solidarity in
spite of
great individual differences in wealth and standing. Over
time,
the gentry induced a series of royal concessions and
guarantees
that vested the noble parliament, or Sejm, with decisive
control
over most aspects of statecraft, including exclusive
rights to
the making of laws. The Sejm operated on the principle of
unanimous consent, regarding each noble as irreducibly
sovereign.
In a further safeguard of minority rights, Polish usage
sanctioned the right of a group of gentry to form a
confederation, which in effect constituted an uprising
aimed at
redress of grievances. The nobility also possessed the
crucial
right to elect the monarch, although the Jagiellons were
in
practice a hereditary ruling house in all but the formal
sense.
The prestige of the Jagiellons and the certainty of their
succession supplied an element of cohesion that tempered
the
disruptive forces built into the state system.

In retrospect historians frequently have derided the
idiosyneratic, delicate governmental mechanism of PolandLithuania as a recipe for anarchy. Although its eventual
breakdown contributed greatly to the loss of independence
in the
eighteenth century, the system worked reasonably well for
200
years while fostering a spirit of civic liberality
unmatched in
the Europe of its day. The host of legal protections that
the
nobility enacted for itself prefigured the rights
generally
accorded the citizens of modern democracies, and the
memory of
the "golden freedoms" of Poland-Lithuania is an important
part of
the Poles' present-day sense of their tradition of
liberty. On
the other hand, the exclusion of the lower nobility from
most of
those protections caused serious resentment among that
largely
impoverished class, and the aristocracy passed laws in the
early
sixteenth century that made the peasants virtual slaves to
the
flourishing agricultural enterprises.

The Government of Poland-Lithuania

In other respects as well, the distinctive features of
Jagiellonian Poland ran against the historical trends of
early
modern Europe. Not the least of those features was its
singular
governmental structure and practice. In an era that
favored the
steady accumulation of power within the hands of European
monarchs, Poland-Lithuania developed a markedly
decentralized
system dominated by a landed aristocracy that kept royal
authority firmly in check. The Polish nobility, or
szlachta, enjoyed the considerable benefits of
landownership and control over the labor of the peasantry.
The
szlachta included 7 to 10 percent of the
population,
making it a very large noble class by European standards.
The
nobility manifested an impressive group solidarity in
spite of
great individual differences in wealth and standing. Over
time,
the gentry induced a series of royal concessions and
guarantees
that vested the noble parliament, or Sejm, with decisive
control
over most aspects of statecraft, including exclusive
rights to
the making of laws. The Sejm operated on the principle of
unanimous consent, regarding each noble as irreducibly
sovereign.
In a further safeguard of minority rights, Polish usage
sanctioned the right of a group of gentry to form a
confederation, which in effect constituted an uprising
aimed at
redress of grievances. The nobility also possessed the
crucial
right to elect the monarch, although the Jagiellons were
in
practice a hereditary ruling house in all but the formal
sense.
The prestige of the Jagiellons and the certainty of their
succession supplied an element of cohesion that tempered
the
disruptive forces built into the state system.

In retrospect historians frequently have derided the
idiosyneratic, delicate governmental mechanism of PolandLithuania as a recipe for anarchy. Although its eventual
breakdown contributed greatly to the loss of independence
in the
eighteenth century, the system worked reasonably well for
200
years while fostering a spirit of civic liberality
unmatched in
the Europe of its day. The host of legal protections that
the
nobility enacted for itself prefigured the rights
generally
accorded the citizens of modern democracies, and the
memory of
the "golden freedoms" of Poland-Lithuania is an important
part of
the Poles' present-day sense of their tradition of
liberty. On
the other hand, the exclusion of the lower nobility from
most of
those protections caused serious resentment among that
largely
impoverished class, and the aristocracy passed laws in the
early
sixteenth century that made the peasants virtual slaves to
the
flourishing agricultural enterprises.

The Polish Renaissance

Fig3. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the Union of Lublin, 1569 to 1667
Click on map for pdf file

The sixteenth century was perhaps the most illustrious
phase
of Polish cultural history. During this period,
Poland-Lithuania
drew great artistic inspiration from the Italians, with
whom the
Jagiellon court cultivated close relations. Styles and
tastes
characteristic of the late Renaissance were imported from
the
Italian states. These influences survived in the renowned
period
architecture of Kraków, which served as the royal capital
until
that distinction passed to Warsaw in 1611. The University
of
Kraków gained international recognition as a cosmopolitan
center
of learning, and in 1543 its most illustrious student,
Nicolaus
Copernicus (Mikolaj Kopernik), literally revolutionized
the
science of astronomy.

The period also bore the fruit of a mature Polish
literature,
once again modeled after the fashion of the West European
Renaissance. The talented dilettante Mikolaj Rej was the
first
major Polish writer to employ the vernacular, but the
elegant
classicist Jan Kochanowski (1530-84) is acknowledged as
the
genius of the age. Accomplished in several genres and
equally
adept in Polish and Latin, Kochanowski is widely regarded
as the
finest Slavic poet before the nineteenth century.

The Eastern Regions of the Realm

The population of Poland-Lithuania was not
overwhelmingly
Catholic or Slavic. This circumstance resulted from the
federation with Lithuania, where ethnic Poles were a
distinct
minority. In those days, to be Polish was much less an
indication
of ethnicity than of rank; it was a designation largely
reserved
for the landed noble class, which included members of
Polish and
non-Polish origin alike. Generally speaking, the
ethnically nonPolish noble families of Lithuania adopted the Polish
language
and culture. As a result, in the eastern territories of
the
kingdom a Polish or Polonized aristocracy dominated a
peasantry
whose great majority was neither Polish nor Catholic. This
bred
resentment that later grew into separate Lithuanian,
Belorussian,
and Ukrainian nationalist movements.

In the mid-sixteenth century, Poland-Lithuania sought
ways to
maintain control of the diverse kingdom in spite of two
threatening circumstances. First, since the late 1400s a
series
of ambitious tsars of the house of Rurik had led Russia in
competing with Poland-Lithuania for influence over the
Slavic
territories located between the two states. Second,
Sigismund II
Augustus (1548-72) had no male heir. The Jagiellon
Dynasty, the
strongest link between the halves of the state, would end
after
his reign. Accordingly, the Union of Lublin of 1569
transformed
the loose federation and personal union of the
Jagiellonian epoch
into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, deepening and
formalizing the bonds between Poland and Lithuania
(see
fig. 3).